Riku 100
by GoldenGriffiness
Summary: Shackled to the darkness. Held with a blindfold to the light. That blindfold... The one that could lie for him, but never to him. This is Riku, shattered fragments of a story he's always been afraid to tell... (My first attempt at a one-hundred theme challenge given to me by none other than myself. A series of unedited rambles. Enjoy.)
1. Lies

Amber.

Cold. Cruel. Harsh. Eyes he remembered ablaze with hate.

His eyes.

Uncertainty.

"What have I done…" Even his voice was cold and deep, like ice.

He didn't like those eye as they stared into his own. They snatched at all the weaknesses of a corrupted heart, shoving them until they were visible to their bearer.

Shoved into the focus of eyes that had refuse to see. He'd been blinder when he got himself, no, all three of them, into this mess than that first time he'd been forced to put on that damned blindfold.

Large brown hands reached to tie the familiar rough fabric, but it did no good. Not to him. Maybe that blindfold could lie to the world for him, but he knew better.

It couldn't lie to him.

Oh, how he wished it could.


	2. Light

Light.

Numbing light, when had it grown to hurt his eyes so much?

The endless black had swallowed him and the king- so how was here now? Amidst all this painfully bright light.

Wait, everything around him- it wasn't shining that bright or it'd be lighter. It was a roiling mass of shades of grey. Had he become so accustomed to the shadows that even this feint half-light hurt his eyes?

Light used to comfort him, reassure him- but now it was oh so painfully foreign. Claimed by shadow, he'd thought he'd been lost to the light.


	3. Lost

No.

You won't use me for this!

_I won't let you hurt her._

Riku…

Her eyes were hurt, and something inside him snarled at that like the beast he'd turned himself into.

You've gotta run, the heartless are coming!

He was made of the little flickering light left to him. Disattached with no real hold on the world.

For the first time he could remember, he was utterly helpless.

Helpless to stop Sora as he faded away again, helpless to move the body that was no longer his, helpless to save the girl he had always thought he loved.

_Kairi… I'm so sorry…_

_If I can't forgive myself, how can I expect anyone else to?_

In that moment fraught with peril, something broke within the child, shattering to night. Guilt seeped into him, body and soul. The darkness had him, tightening and tightening its grip. As that something began to crack and break while the world began to slip away.

Nightfall. Blackness. Shadow.  
His eyes darted around, vein in their search for even of glimmer of light.


	4. Mine

It was scorching in his hands. Why?

If it was his from the start why did it feel so completely wrong? The hand that clasped it felt like it had many days, scorched and withered sunlight.

Was he really that alienated from the light by now? Was it the heartless?

The blade that should be his shivered in his hands like it was alive, the light in it scorching through his palm and up his arm as its feeble light tried to scare the dark he'd coccooned himself in away.

It didn't work.  
_The keyblade is _mine.


	5. Mirror

For so long he hid, afraid. For so long he thought he had changed more than they could ever, ever, forgive.

But he hadn't. Maybe for anyone else it would have been to much. For him it was to much. The way his hand made dwarfs of theirs, the way he had to look so far down to see them.

The hawkish face that scarred his heart whenever he dared glance at a mirror.

But here they were. Still together, still fighting, still friends.

Even in this body, he felt complete.

Even with his face like this, they treated him just the same.

Maybe they did not know how different he was on the inside to...

But even so, with their hands all together and their hearts no longer apart, a mirror ripped through time. To the islands, to their innocence.

Years spent with the warm tropical wind and the sun chasing the stars over the ever-blue sea. Years spent chucking coconuts like weapons and sitting on a tree that looked like it had reached to the sky and scooped a handful of stars from the heaven.

That island was now worlds away, the innocence of that childhood gone like the sun at dusk.

But still... With these two right here, home was reachable.

They were the home he had craved. Not the sea-swept sands or the blazing dawns. This was home in every way that mattered.


End file.
